I think the number of children living in poverty in the U.S. is about the same as in Britain. In the richest countries of the world, including the U.S. and Britain, it is immoral to have so many children living below the poverty line. In fact, I believe the child poverty stats indicate that rich countries like us are morally bankrupt! As the artist who created a nifty and instructive poster said, Zero children should be living in poverty. “We need change.”
Indeed. We as a society (and as an electorate) have both the means and the power to reduce child poverty nearly to zero. But do 51 percent of us want to really do that? Do 51 percent of us even care?
I’m afraid to say the answer.
(You can see the poster by clicking on the Abba1blog post below.)
— John Hayden
This started of as a little sketch of a table and chairs in a coffee shop, which evolved in to a mini poverty poster!
I have been reading so much lately about the hidden and unspoken inequality and hardship that goes on in Britain that no one speaks about, and most probably don’t even know about, for example these insane poverty statistics.I think when your’e eating a cinnamon swirl with a soy latte you realise how lucky you actually are? and that a cinnamon swirl probably isn’t a life necessity (no its definitely not). So all of us in that coffee shop that day who were spending too much money on cake, are lucky people to even be able to have that as a opportunity to us, and i completely recognize that.
The fact that 1 in 4 kids live in poverty I think is really really sad, as like…
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Living Simply And Still On The Grid 
I can’t speak to how Britain measures things but in America since either 2010 or 2011, the government has decided that from now on 20% of our children will always “live in poverty.” This is because now in America “poverty” has no absolute measure and isn’t based upon anything other than having less income than the wealthy. Simply put, they made the “poverty line” relative and decided that the lowest 20% were the “poor” irrespective of whether or not they experienced actual poverty.
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An interesting point. The best ways to measure things are usually open to discussion. Accurate statistics are important. However in this case, accuracy is a red herring. However you measure it, I think it’s clear that we have a lot of child poverty, and any level of child poverty is bad.
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